Radio Compost

RC is a radio /podcast project that focuses on acoustic ecology, seeking sounds of changes in the environment from difficult to reach places to our own backyards in suburbia, city centers, public spaces and local “natural” environments. The curation is based on different approaches that scientists, artists and musicians might take, often though collaboration and experimenting with different diciplinary methods.

“When we use the term environmental sound, we are not referring to a specific kind of sound, nor a specific kind of environment, but to a specific conception of sound in which it is defined by its environmental context: thus, the tweeting of birds and the rustling of leaves in the wind are part of the environmental sound of a forest; the hum of air conditioning and the tapping of computer keyboards are part of the environmental sound of an office.” Bianchi, Frederick & Manzo, V.J., Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words, New York, NY, Oxford. 2016.

This project was created for the community radio in Colboradio, streaming and broadcasting from FR-BB, Community Radio 88.4 MHz station Berlin, Germany. Radio Compost is about listening deeply to the banal, mundane, and difficult-to-hear environmental sounds. There is a poetics to be discovered in the acoustic landscape that might reveal the health of our planet. What do these bioacoustics say to us as consumers? Can listening deeply to the outdoors help us better understand the impact humans are having on planet earth?

The following sound compositions expose the listener to different
methods and approaches in “listening” to place.
Using experimental poetic and direct means, from field recording to
composed works, the artists are informed by bioacoustics, and data
sonification, and interpretation of what they heard. The complexity and indicators of fitness and
health of the natural world might be sounding an alarm.

Sound art
arranged from underwater recordings of Weddell seals at Big Razorback Island in
McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, contributes to scientific understanding of their
breeding patterns. Big Razorback Island is part of an archipelago, the crest of
an extinct caldera in the Ross Sea and a known breeding area for the Weddell
seal.

Researchers
have classified 12 types of calls with 34 discrete phrases, from booming
territorial sounds to birdlike chirps and whistles. Their frequency range is
remarkable, with lower frequency calls registering around 0.1KHz and others
reaching up to 70KHz, well beyond human hearing which levels out at about
16KHz. Males generally have a broader repertoire of calls which are heard most
often during the mating season, as a display to competing males and to attract
females. Weddell seal sounds can be heard above and below the ice and they
communicate on land as well as in water. Underwater source levels of some calls
can reach a deafening193dB. These powerful sounds can be felt through 2 metres
of ice.

Excerpted from HyperAcousia.
On a desolate beach in Northern California’s
Humboldt County, a marine biologist and a citizen scientist troll for bird
carcasses, inadvertently finding beauty and, perhaps, answers about the ocean’s
warming waters.

Edward Ruchalski created iso-loci 2017 for homework – year 2 by Taalem Records. At the time Ruchalski was immersed in an artist-residency at Stone Quarry Hill Park, Cazenovia, NY. A majority of the hydrophone and field recording are from small vernal ponds that included improvisation on metal sculptures located in the park. The cicadas are recorded from a farm near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Polli’s sound composition inspired by “complexity theory” was
generated from point-based weather data from 1962 – 1992 by the Canadian
Ecodistrict. Solar radiation,
temperature, and sunlight data was used to control the wind samples.